Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the findings in the IPCC’s Special Report entitled the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

We welcome the IPCC Special Report, which provides the best available science on the wide range of impacts of climate change on the ocean and the cryosphere and potential measures for building resilience to those impacts. Climate change has already caused significant impacts on the ocean and cryosphere, including warming, acidification and deoxygenation of the ocean, melting of glaciers, ice sheets and permafrost, and sea level rise, with detrimental consequences for ecosystems and people.

As this report and the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5◦C find, the severity of future impacts depends heavily on the levels of future greenhouse gas emissions. Higher emissions will result in more severe impacts, which is why the UK government set a legally binding target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions from across the UK economy by 2050.

To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees we should explore every available avenue. In the marine environment, Nature Based Solutions such as the conservation and restoration of coastal habitats, protection of coral reefs and designation of Marine Protected Areas can provide climate mitigation as well as climate adaptation and resilience benefits for biodiversity, fish nursery habitats, storm protection and contributions to coastal communities. To that end, the UK is encouraging countries to join the Global Ocean Alliance - our call to protect at least 30% of the global ocean within Marine Protected Areas by 2030.